December 16, 2018

Farewell to Fallen Empire

By Justin C. Fallen Empire has announced that they plan to stop releasing new music by the end of this year or early 2019. The label has long been a source of some of the most mysterious and outre metal out there. Focusing on primarily black metal and black metal-adjacent sounds

By Justin C.

Fallen Empire has announced that they plan to stop releasing new music by the end of 2018. The label has long been a source of some of the most mysterious and outre metal out there. Focusing on primarily black metal and black metal-adjacent sounds, Fallen Empire has been a beacon of no-fucks-given releases. Albums appeared with little promotion or forewarning, and information on the artists has been mostly scant. For all I know, some of these releases have been made by particularly kvlt cats, perhaps by my own corpse paint kitty.

Marshall.

A look at our archives shows that we’ve been fans for a while, but as a final tribute, I wanted to talk about three recent releases that will in all likelihood be some of the last music that Fallen Empire puts out.

Arkhtinn’s latest album, 最初の災害, which Google translate tells me means “First Disaster” in Japanese, is an interesting case. They call this their debut, although they’ve put out at least six releases before. That said, this is the first album of theirs that I’ve really gotten into, so maybe their choice to call this a debut isn’t an arbitrary distinction.

On the album's two 20+ minute tracks, Arkhtinn uses sheets of black metal sound. Electronic storms start the first track, before layers and layers of more traditional black metal sounds wash over you. Screeches fight their way to the surface. But as dense and impenetrable as this can sound, there’s a strong melodic line as well. The second track is a bit different--here the band keeps their signature sound, but plays with different levels of complexity vs. directness. The track occasionally drops down to simpler, chugging riffs, and even a mournful piano/synth/organ passage, before spiraling off again into even higher levels of intensity and pure old meanness. I’ve liked parts of their previous releases, but I think this track is really what finally sold me on this band.

Andeis’s Servants of the Cold Night is apparently the work of two individuals, referred to as Laignech and Verwoesting, and their Bandcamp page says that the project has been in development from 1999 to 2016. Yes, that’s a full 17 years. It’s anyone’s guess as to why the gestation period was that long, but I’m glad it finally saw the light of day before Fallen Empire went away.

Andeis also falls squarely into the lo-fi black metal category--Fallen Empire’s bread and butter--but unlike Arkhtinn, their music is a more direct, stomping affair. But that doesn’t mean simple. Under the dirt and grime, there’s a distinct, gothy tinge to the music. For example, there are some chant/moan-like vocals in “Wintrus hailagaizos aggwiþos,” followed up by some old school, horror movie-style organ. What could be lost in a sea of other similarly styled bands jumped out at me as something with an interesting twist.

I had the feeling Krukh would be a special release, because it’s yet another one of Markov Soroka’s projects. I’ve reviewed his work before, including his barely-there black metal space project Aureole and the meatier, blackened death of Tchornobog. This first album by Krukh, titled Безглуздість! (which appears to roughly translate to “Absurdity!”), fits somewhere between the two.

If you’ve spent any time with Soroka’s other work, it’s easy to recognize his stylistic touches on this. The first track features an addictive push-pull dynamic between two rhythmic figures while Soroka uses more of a “bellowing/hollering” approach to vocals than what we typically expect from black metal. The album largely deals in mid- to fast-paced black metal with a heavy emphasis on melody, but I also initially got a strong sense of what I’d describe as extreme emotional frustration mixed with sadness permeating these tracks--a sense that’s reinforced by track titles like “Thoughtlessness,” “Lost,” and “Grief.” “Lost” hammers this point home by pitting a lonely guitar against sounds of rain, and the final track offers contemplative acoustic guitar that fades into silence. The band themselves describe the album as being about the struggles immigrants to the U.S. face, which of course is a particularly fraught topic right now, making the range of emotions that comes through the music even more powerful. It’s possible I’ve just become a Soroka fanboy, but I’m continually impressed with the range and quality of the music he’s put out, and it’s a fitting release for the last batch of Fallen Empire records we’ll probably ever hear.